Uncoded Ethiopic Characters

Some number of letters without code assignments may be found in Ethiopic manuscripts that
occur with varying frequency depending on the language and time period of the written script.
This section presents a list of all known unassigned characters by the proposal committee.
Some tentative address are offered. Failing to find supporting materials for many of the
character classes their permanent assignment will have to be delayed until they are better
understood. The primary complication surrounding permanent address assignment now is the
lack of information to determine if two classes similar in appearance are uniquely different
phoneme groups or merely glyph alternatives. The correct phonetic values of the unknown
character must be determined as well for use in assignment to a Unicode name standard.

The committee is making a continuing effort to retrieve information on the unassigned
characters. Please contact any member of the work group
if the reader has additional information to provide. Characters will be removed from this
list as permanent code assignments are made.

Image and text formatting in this section may be of differing quality for different font
selections.

Ethiopic Rules Stylized Punctuation

Ethiopic text is often published with ASCII punctuation having typeface differences from
the equivalent punctuation found in non-Ethiopic blocks of text. Since the punctuation
has no functional difference in either Ethiopic or non-Ethiopic blocks of texts, the
Ethiopic typefaces are not eligible for unique encoding under Unicode.

Market realities will force vendors to provide the Ethiopic typefaces to customers in
some manner. It will not be desirable to vendors to provide separate Unicode fonts with
the typeface changes in the Latin ranges. Nor will it be convenient for users or programmers
to have to change fonts for these punctuation key strikes. It expected then that vendors
would attempt to supply the typeface changes in unassigned space within a Unicode font table.
The Unicode standard provides vendor use space in the Private Use Area U+E300->U+FDFF. It
is recommended then, for cross application compatibility, that vendors assign Ethiopic stylized
punctuation beginning from the end of the private use zone. Encoding for the most common
stylized punctuations are given in the following:

U+FDF0

U+FDFA

U+FDFB

U+FDFC

U+FDFD

U+FDFE

U+FDFF

,

,

,

,

,

,

UNASSIGNED CONSONANT CLASSES

ITALIAN SERIES GLA -> GLO

The GLA series has been found in Italian references from the 17th century and early 20th
century. Colloquially the first or fourth order character may be used for an alternate of
LWA (120F). The modern and historical use of the character Eritrea and Ethiopia is not
understood at the time of this proposal. The Ge'ez (first order) form is shown:

What appears to be a 13th series for the consonant classes of MAE, RAE, & FAE,
appear in prominent works on Amharic by
Cohen and
Dawkins and were adapted in the transcription
systems of the Library of Congress and
Board of Geographic Names.
Word examples or dialects of Amharic where these sounds are used are not known by the present
proposal committee.

Given the evidence by
Ludolf
that a complete MYA series at one time existed, a complete FA with overbar series from
another proposal, the
MYA and the RYA variants, and
the observation of the addition of overbar to NA and GA series to form -Y- like classes
in Amharic (NYA) and Agew and Bilin (GYA) languages; it is plausible that three characters
below representing MYA, RYA, and FYA are the surviving members of complete series of 7
consonant classes. Whereby they should not be treated as the 13th syllabic form
of their base consonants. The Ge'ez (first order) forms are shown below
and were proposed in UTF 95-055A at the end of the letters region.
The necessity to code the entire series of each of extensions is
being studied vs coding of only the values known to be used
[ 4, 5,
8, 9,
11] :

In Wolf Leslau'sEthiopians Speak: Studies in Cultural Background.
``New symbols had to be introduced into Ethiopic script for sounds of Chaha not
existing in Amharic.'' The four consonant classes introduced were palatized velars
given the transcription values; q', k', x' and g'.
Unicode name equivalents are offered as QQA, KKA, XKA, and GGA respectively,
that follow the list below :

,
,
,

NOTES Though the overbar is usually drawn as detached, the series QQA may be identical to QHA->QHO
(U+1250->U+1256) which has an attached overbar. The phonetic values need be compared to determine this.
The GGA series is employed in written Bilin for a sound similar to
ñ but not the same as the NYA series beginning at U+1298. The
syllable series of GGA was proposed in UTC 95-055A and occupies the code range
U+1318 - U+131E.
Finally, with the exception of GGA, it is not known if any
of the series introduced by Leslau have been adapted into the writing systems of Chaha or other written
languages in either Eritrea or Ethiopia.

Lesser Known Consonant Classes

Information on the consonant classes represented by the characters below is
being sought by the proposal committee. Tentative names are assigned to serve
purposes of communication. The characters are known to be provided in the
font packages and software by
ModEth and
Jerdina World Trade.
It is hightly plausible that the characters are well formed glyph
alternates of the consonants series introduced
by Leslau (see above)
[15] :

,
,
,

The exception may be for the final character, a variant of GA, labeled now
as GYA. The glyphs presented for GGA and GYA series may be employed for
unique and distinct phonemes in written Chaha, Bilin, (and even Agew) where
ejective and sinal forms of GA are found (though not known if existing in
the same language). It remains also to uncover which glyph is preferred for the
ejective form, and which for the sinal.